I just finished the game. It’s good, no doubt. But it’s worse than MUA. Far worse.

-Less RPG/customization
-Fewer characters
-Fewer uniforms
-No unique team creation
-Worse/less voice acting
-Not as smooth.

Why did it take you years just to go backwards on this game? I paid $60 for this game, I expect it to get better than the game I shelled out $60 for YEARS AGO.

So whats up with that? I’m really gonna be careful about buying VV products in the future.. I feel totally ripped off right now.

I disagree, I personally love the game and think it is a big step from MUA, I respect your opinion though. But come on, give VV some slack! They spent around 3 years building this game from nothing and it is their first time, I am sure if VV get to make another it will be way way more better and be on the shelves more sooner because they now have the data from MUA2, so making an XML3 or MUA3 will be much faster.

The fusions is what caused them to take years. That’s VV excuse.

You might want to change your title. You’re talking about MUA2, but it says MUA1.

StoicSentry - 05 November 2009 03:39 AM

-Less RPG/customization
-Fewer characters
-Fewer uniforms
-No unique team creation
-Worse/less voice acting
-Not as smooth.

Okay, let’s deal with these one at a time.

-Less RPG/customization
There are more RPG elements in this game than in the last one, including multiple dialogue options and two different paths you can take through the second act of the game. As for the customization, it’s true that there’s less abilities, but this is actually a bonus. A lot of the powers in MUA1 were useless, and most people only took two or three of them. The powers in this game are much more balanced, giving all characters four different abilities, each with a different strategic use in combat.

-Fewer characters
MUA1, on release, had 23 characters, 25 including the next-gen exclusives. MUA2, on release, had 23 characters, 24 including Juggernaut. So a total of one less character, or two if you didn’t pre-order. While this complaint is technically true, it’s also exaggerated.

-Fewer uniforms
Again, this is technically true. However, the uniforms we do have, have much higher attention to detail, and the game no longer punishes you for using a uniform you like, or changing uniforms when you get tired of one.

-No unique team creation
I’m going to guess you’re talking about the lack of the feature in MUA1 that allowed you to make a special team. Well, again, this is true, but the feature in MUA1 never really went anywhere and really was just included to give you more bonuses. Additionally, in the CGI cutscenes, it always showed your team as being Thor, Wolverine, Captain America and Spider-man regardless as to your team makeup. This game actually has cutscenes that show the team -you- made.

-Worst/less voice acting
This is subjective. However, I personally don’t know what you’re talking about. It seems like there’s just as much, if not more dialogue and the voice acting has stayed around the same in quality. Also, the lines they’re delivering are less hammy. But that can’t be blamed on the voice actors, but rather the writers, who were making the story reminiscent of the cheesy comic plotlines of old, while still also trying to make the game feel epic. This isn’t a bad thing, but I’m just saying.

-Not as smooth
This is also subjective, but I don’t know what you mean here. The game feels just as ‘smooth’ to me as MUA1.

StoicSentry - 05 November 2009 03:39 AM

I just finished the game. It’s good, no doubt. But it’s worse than MUA. Far worse.

-Less RPG/customization
-Fewer characters
-Fewer uniforms
-No unique team creation
-Worse/less voice acting
-Not as smooth.

Why did it take you years just to go backwards on this game? I paid $60 for this game, I expect it to get better than the game I shelled out $60 for YEARS AGO.

So whats up with that? I’m really gonna be careful about buying VV products in the future.. I feel totally ripped off right now.[/quote- your a jerk this game rocks!-theres some little probs here and there ,but today will be the day to change that for you!!!-kick ass dlc and a patch!!

-Worst/less voice acting
This is subjective. However, I personally don’t know what you’re talking about. It seems like there’s just as much, if not more dialogue and the voice acting has stayed around the same in quality. Also, the lines they’re delivering are less hammy. But that can’t be blamed on the voice actors, but rather the writers, who were making the story reminiscent of the cheesy comic plotlines of old, while still also trying to make the game feel epic. This isn’t a bad thing, but I’m just saying.

There is less voice acting (the cut scenes for the most part are shorter and there are fewer of them) I don’t mind it but I would like to see more cut scenes if they were to make a sequel but at the same time I’d like the characters in my team to be in the cut scenes (even if they just stand there and say nothing.) but overall I don’t think it really affected the playability of the game much.

this guys a troll

he posted the same thing a week ago

I think the game is much better simply because MUA looked designed for kids. This one looks much more mature and appealing to a teen/young adult audience.

The animations, physics, and destruction far surpass MUA recycled quality from XML.

Less powers and characters, yes, but MUA was quantity over quality anyway. Only 3-4 moves were fun and effect, just like in this game.

If MUA was a C, this game would be a C+. Or if it was a B, this would be a B+, etc. It’s one notch forward, imo.

StoicSentry - 05 November 2009 03:39 AM

I just finished the game. It’s good, no doubt. But it’s worse than MUA. Far worse.

-Less RPG/customization
-Fewer characters
-Fewer uniforms
-No unique team creation
-Worse/less voice acting
-Not as smooth.

Why did it take you years just to go backwards on this game? I paid $60 for this game, I expect it to get better than the game I shelled out $60 for YEARS AGO.

So whats up with that? I’m really gonna be careful about buying VV products in the future.. I feel totally ripped off right now.

Yeah, I agree. This new game is waaayyy too easy. xmen Legends was a challenge, mua1 was a bit tricky in places, but this game i can finish without dying. I miss being able to customize characters too. being stuck with the same powers makes the replay less fun. I bought a ps3 to play this game and am not impressed with it.

don’t hate on the OP for having an opinion
I also think this game is satisfactory… but the first game was much much more than that, imo.  Sure the graphics weren’t as good, but what the hell do you people expect that game was made years ago!  The levels in the first may not be as detailed and destructible as in this game, but they were many times more diverse and represented almost every different corner of the Marvel Universe… Also, the first game was much longer and imo had a ton more replay value.  I thoroughly enjoyed the team-builder feature, and having 4 costumes is always nice.

having 2 really detailes ones is awesome… but often times I find that I hate either the default or alternate costume (or sometimes both… Wolverine-- hated how they altered his astonishing outfit… just looks odd to me)

also the character selection was much more to my liking in the first (especially in the gold version/DLC with Hawkeye, Hulk, Cyclops, and Sabertooth)

Overall I give the first game a 9/10 (despite the hideous Ultimate Thor costume used for all the cutscenes lol)
and I rate this game 7/10

Everyone is entittled to their opinion and it is important on a forum like this to be respectful of what others have to say since both positive and negative critiques benefit the desiners. that being said i disagree with virtually every point you have made. Sure their were more pre-rendered cut scenes in the other games, but they had far less dialouge than this one and virtually no voice work in game. The overall production value was far less than the current tittle. Most of the characters had recycled animations, effects, and moves from the characters in the legends series. Most of the alternates were low poly re-skins and the pace of the game was a slow grind fest until the player leveled to a point that took what little challenge it had to offer away. I still own UA1 and both legends games and even pla them from time to time, but the overall effort in this tittle was a much larger task. Most of the moves from the old game madeinto this game as side effects of the 4 default moves at higher level or were integrated into the fusion system. The new game also put a greater emphasis on team work in its core design. This was not only in the fusion system but in the health management, leveling, and team management as well. The overall product was very good considering they didn’t have the luxury of recycling animations and assets the way that raven did. The roster is virtually the same size as well. About the only thing that I will agree with is that I missed the team editor. When using themed group the player recieved a bonus that granted a strategic advantage in the game. The team editor added a level of customization that allowed the player to make their own team and still recieve a bonus. As for costumes, new models take more time than reskins. While I would like to have had more options for alternates, I was very happy to find that I wasn’t punished for wearing the costume I liked. I like that they stipped the bonus from the outfit and integrated them into grneral level progression. There are a lot of thing that they could of done in retospect. But the product shows great attention to detail and an eye for quality over quanity.

There are NOT less characters in MUA2, unless you add in MUA1’s DLC. And it isn’t really fair to add in DLC when MUA1 has been out 2 years, and MUA2 has only been out 2 months. You really expect a game to have more DLC in 2 months than another game had in 2 years?

MUA1 had 23 characters to begin with. 25 if you had a next-gen game which added Colossus and Moon Knight.

MUA2 had 24 characters to begin with. 25 with Juggernaut.

If you count the “extra” characters available at the start, the two are even. If you don’t count them, MUA2 actually has a 1 character advantage.

If the game were still using MUA1 resources, having 1 more character at the start would be pathetic. But since everything in MUA2 was redone from scratch and considering things like fusions, its a perfectly reasonable number.

Uniforms are a lot more detailed this time around, so while its a valid point, its a question of quality over quantity. And there’s no definitive answer to which is better. Some people will prefer the former, others the later. I’ll take 2 very detailed costumes over 4 basic costumes (some of which are just color swaps), personally.

Unique team creation didn’t really do anything besides giving you some minor bonuses. Could they have done more with it? Sure. But in the state it was in, its really not a big loss to remove it. Besides, there’s more focus on being able to switch up your team freely in this game, and adding a “set” team would contradict that.

As for the voice acting… there’s probably about the same amount of voice acting in the two games, or a bit more in MUA2. MUA1 had more conversations and the unique conversations were completely voiced on both sides (player and NPC). But MUA2 has 6 different choices per conversation, all voiced, and a fair amount of unique conversations, which also have 6 different choices. There are also more quips in MUA2, both normal quips and also the addition of side-specific quips, and the bosses have quips as well.

And quality is entirely opinion. Personally, I favor the MUA2 voice acting in general, though I think both games are pretty solid as a whole.

Ten reasons why MUA2 is better than MUA1:

1) Superior graphics, especially in terms of detailed character models
2) Passive abilities are not tied to a particular costume, so you don’t have to choose a costume you hate just to get the abilities you want (e.g., if I want Wolverine to have a healing passive in MUA1, I have to pick his Astonishing costume, but my favorite costume for him is Brown and Tan; so I have to decide whether I want my favorite costume or a good passive ability).
3) Fusions are 100X more fun than Extremes, because they are actually moves that you can control instead of slow-motion scenes that you sit back and watch.  Also, even though people complain that there are only 10 or 12 basic types of fusions, the Extremes in MUA1 were almost all exactly the same: most characters (even tanks!) had a generic radial attack.  There is a lot more variety in fusions than there ever was in Extremes.
4) You can subtract points from your Powers whenever you want to, so if you spend a point and then later decide you’d rather build your character somewhat differently, you don’t have to start a new game to re-distribute your points.  Also, you can subtract the initial point from your default Powers, so if for some reason you don’t like your default power you can get rid of it (in MUA1 you were forced to have at least one point in your default power).
5) The majority of the Powers are useful, whereas in MUA1 most characters had at least two powers that were virtually worthless
6) They brought back the power tree system from XML1, so that your Powers actually gain new effects as you build them up, instead of just more damage
7) The Stamina bar refills very quickly in MUA2, so you can use your Powers more frequently and don’t have to melee unless you are using a character who is good for melee fighting (in MUA you frequently have to melee with non-melee characters simply because your blue bar is empty)
8) MUA2 storyline is not perfect, but it is more serious and real-world than MUA1’s storyline, less like a kid’s game and more like an adult game.
9) The characters are more unique and require different styles of gameplay: you can’t run into a mob with Storm and expect to melee without dying quickly, you need to use her Powers; Luke Cage or Thing, on the other hand, can be built in such a way that they take very little damage and can melee all day long.  This is a more accurate reflection of the comics.
10) Ability points are not shared by the whole team, which means that you can feel free to level up one character’s passive abilities without hurting the other characters.  In MUA1 passive abilities had to be bought with money, but money is shared by the whole team.  So if (like me) you enjoy changing characters frequently instead of sticking with the same four characters all the time, you don’t end up leveling up anyone’s passive abilities the way you should.  You end up spreading your money thin by trying to level up all the characters, so that you never really get any of the abilities (or few of them) filled out enough.

On the other hand,

1) It is so friggin’ annoying that the ‘unlock all characters’ code disables saves, because when I do a second or third playthrough on a game like this, I erase all my save data so that I can start my characters at level 1 again instead of playing through with characters that are already built-up and therefore too strong for the early levels.  In MUA1, the ‘unlock all characters’ code enables you to erase your save data without losing the characters you have earned, but in MUA2 if you want to use the characters you have earned, you can’t re-start your characters at level 1 (i.e., because you will lose the unlocked characters if you erase your save data).  This is really a major flaw with MUA2 in my opinion, and it reduces the re-play value for me personally.  Not everyone who uses an ‘unlock all characters’ code is trying to cheat; some people (like me) are just trying to re-start a new game at level one without losing all of their unlocked characters.

I never used the unique team creation in the first game because I had thought it was stupid that if you switched out any one or three characters you didnt get the bonuses and they didnt have it to where you could have “reserve” members either. The only type of bonuses I used in the game were the team bonuses like Agile Warriors and Fantastic Four, etc. I am glad they didnt add the unique team creation in this game I felt it was just useless to me and never used it ever. The only reason I knew what they did was because I bought the MUA1 guide that talked about it.

I agree
esp since the game really promotes using the entire roster
and not jsut 12 pre-selected members who you are basically punished for not using at least 3 of all the time
that was lame